


A Soldier’s Lament

by Messiah



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, POV Second Person, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-13 00:21:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7130609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Messiah/pseuds/Messiah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now as you lay bare as the day you were born, in some rotten place that looks so much like the first, you understand why the dying on the beach of Normandy had screamed for their mothers as they held their guts in their own hands.</p><p>Or why Bucky Barnes sympathies with Tony Stark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Soldier’s Lament

**Author's Note:**

> Beta read by my friend Tara, all remaining mistakes are my own.

The first happy memory you remember, is of your mother.

∞

You remember Steve. The way he laughs with his whole body, the sound of his voice, the touch of his lips. You remember his stubbornness and all the brawls you fought for his sake, all the blood spilled and bruises earned. You remember the good and the bad and all the thousands of reasons why you still cling to him like a shadow.

But you can’t for the life of you, remember how you ended up here. Here, where it is dark and cold and lonesome. And then there is a piece of you missing, much like that piece in your memory. But you remember Steve and his hopeless savior urges, so you cry and scream and wail for him to rescue you again as they starve you, beat you, burn you. As they poke and prod and cut and turn you into something that isn’t you.

But then they tell you about the Valkyrie and the crash and then—then you start screaming for your mother instead. Because isn’t that what you always did when you were little? If you scraped up your knees, cut your finger or split your lip; you ran home to your mother, bleary eyed and with snot running down your face as your breath hitched in your throat, because it always felt better in her arms. Her soothing words as she stroked your hair, wiped away your tears and held you close. So close.

Now as you lay bare as the day you were born, in some rotten place that looks so much like the first, you understand why the dying on the beach of Normandy had screamed for their mothers as they held their guts in their own hands. Because maybe, maybe you are just dreaming an awful dream and if you scream loud enough, your mother will come and wake you up. Maybe, just maybe, you are still eight years old and back in Brooklyn. Home in your bed, safe and sound and not off across the Atlantic, fighting in a war started by old men.

∞

When they reopen the wound on what’s left of your arm, you cry so much and so hard that they abort whatever they were about to do with the saw and the scalpels and the metal rods.

_Please please please, I want my mom._

The gurney is cold and hard against your back, and everything that makes you, you, aches. You watch with blurry eyes as they put back the white cloth over the tools, you hear the doctor bark out something that can’t be anything but displeasure.

_Please, please, mom._

And then there’s a hand on your forehead, chilly and gentle; thumb rubbing soothing circles over your pounding temple. Your breath gets stuck on your throat and as you look up, a nurse stares down at you. Her face covered by the surgical mask, the overhead light shadowing her face, but you still see her the glimmer in her eyes – the eyes of a mother.

As far as small mercies go, they give you the night to calm down, and that hand–that hand stays until you fall asleep.

∞

You’re twenty-nine and sixty-eight at the same time. What makes you, you, aren’t there anymore. You’re the finger on the trigger and tonight, you’re nothing more than that. Perhaps you never have been.

The sitting room is bright and dark; the walls white, the décor black. In the center of the room, a mother and child sits and weeps. By their knees, there’s blood.

There’s something familiar—something—

—something that makes your whole chest ache. A pain that curls your shoulders inward and cuts the string that keeps your back straight. You can hear blood rush in your ears, feel the way your heart thunders in your chest. The breaths you take feel heavy.

Your commander turns to you, an ugly son of a bitch with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth and orders, “Take Johnston with you and drown them both.”

You swallow down the bile in your mouth and watch as Johnston grabs them both by the hair, dragging them off the red carpet as they kick and scream through the gags. You watch as if frozen to the ground as the three of them disappear down the dark hallway – until your commander slaps you across the face and back to reality.

“Did you even fucking listen?” he growls, his fist full of the collar of your shirt, dragging you close enough to for the smell of smoke to burn through your nostrils. You nod once and then he shoves you off down the hall, barking as you go. “Drown them both, _now_.”

Your cheek still stings when step into the bathroom; the lights bright in the large room. In the tub, the water is already pooling.

“Please, _please_ ,” the mother begs as she looks up at you. Eyes red rimmed and snot running all the way down her chin. Her dark hair is tousled, her yellow dress ripped at the front and her small hands are turning blue from the ropes.

“Grab that fucking bitch,” Johnston snaps. You look up at him and his ugly mug: the wart on his nose and the balding scalp; the porn mustache and double chin. A second pass, two, three and then, “Are you _fucking_ deaf or something?”

You stare at him as you tilt your head slightly to the side; you can see that he waits for you to part your lips, speak your mind as you so seldom do. You watch as his hand travels down to finger on the holster on his hip; how he lets go of the kid half-hanging over the edge of the bath and shoves him toward his mother, clearing the space between you and him.

The child can’t be more than ten years old. Dark hair, blue eyes; there’s a bravery to his gaze, something unmoving as he looks up at you with tears running down his face, jaw set tight.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Johnston demands, red faced and furious. You look down at the kid and the mother, and then up at Johnston. “I just gave you a _fucking_ _ord_ —”

The flick of your wrist is automatic; fingers grasping the handle of the pistol and in the next, you’ve pulled the trigger. Brains and blood and bone fragments shooting backwards, onto the tile and they scream, the mother and her son screaming bloody murder through the gags.

Johnston’s headless body hasn’t even hit the floor before the rest of the team crowds the doorway, looking in wide-eyed. You’re breathing like a raging bull and your commander, the man with the cigarette, starts to laugh at the front of the troop. A dark, eerie laugh that bounces between the splattered walls as he steps over the threshold, tosses the fag on the floor and walks up to you until he’s eye to eye; takes the gun from your slack hand; pushes you against the wall. How he stands so close that you can feel the heat omitting from his skin, almost feel the scrape of his stubble against your cheek. You swallow down the sour taste in your mouth and you’re convinced that he can hear the pounding of your heart from being so, so close.  

“What the fuck is wrong with you today?” he asks in a casual way, but there’s still an anger simmering just beneath the surface. A hostility that makes you gulp and shrink and your palm sweat. “Feeling a little under the weather, huh?”

Your tongue feels big and dry in your mouth, but you nod. Because something is wrong. There’s a pain in your chest, weighing you down and every breath you take is almost like a pant. He watches you for a moment, two; looking you straight in the eye.

“Take him outside,” he finally orders, backing away and that’s when you realize you’ve been bracing; waiting for the blow. “He’s been out the freezer for too long.”

They disarm you, put you in the back of the truck and the next time you lean back in that chair, cold and clammy, and with your head aching with the image of the mother and her son, you hear them mutter something about upping the voltage.

Not that you remember that later anyway.

∞

You’re almost a hundred years old when you remember who you once had been. The memories that come back do so in waves and as waves – they are big, overwhelming, drowning. After remembering so much pain and misery and death, you remember something that’s not dripping red.

The first happy memory you remember, is of your mother.

You’re in Brooklyn when it comes galloping back. You can’t have been more than six years old when your mother; your strong, beautiful and loving mother, walked you to your first day at school. You remember her proud smile and kind words, the way she preached about the importance of education and how she wanted you to be a doctor, so you could save people.

You remember holding her hand all the way, the way she sank down to her knees and kissed your cheek in the school yard and then—then as the memory close, you realize that there isn’t a chance in hell that she’s still alive. Because as far as the future goes, humans doesn’t live for a century. Well, except for you.

So you cry, long and hard and ugly.

It’s the future and you still want to find her, may God rest her soul. But there isn’t enough time, and you don’t know where to start.

So you go, over the Atlantic once more.

∞

“Does it hurt?”

You look up and see Steve, how he nods toward the stump of wires and metal, blown off to hell. Lost, again.

“I don’t really… feel it, or I do… Like right now.” You look down toward the end, at the wires and the copper and the blackened plates. “My fingers feel stiff, like I can’t… move them at all.”

And then as you look up at Steve, you see worry. The wrinkle in between his brows deepening, his lips pressed tight together as he nods. There’s anger in his eyes, not targeted at you, but still an anger—a hatred that tightens his jaw.

“There’s an itch—” you continue and you taste blood as your tongue darts out and slides across your lower lip, and then you smile for no reason at all other than the bitter irony of it all. An unscratchable itch. “—on my forearm, which might be worse than the stiffness.”

Steve softens and that smile he smiles is a pitying one. He gestures toward the stump, “Can I?”

“Sure,” you reply without thinking twice and then Steve’s coming over, sitting down next to you. He raises his hands slow, stops and then his fingers are left hovering by the torn arm, an inch from touching. There’s a pregnant pause as Steve’s face darkens, the lines going tight again.

“What Tony did—”

“ _Stop_.” You sigh as you look at Steve, into the depth of his eyes; shrugging with the busted shoulder. “I don’t blame Stark for this. I understand him.”

Steve sits straighter, his shoulders go back; his gaze darker. “He was going to kill you.”

 _And you were going to kill him_ , but you don’t say that. Instead you bite your tongue, the last bit of your smile dying and confess, “In his shoes, I would have done the same.”

“Don’t say—”

“ _If_ —” You cut him short, so brisk and curt that you pause. “—if I saw someone strangle my mother to death I would want to kill them too.”

Because that’s the truth. You would have made use of all that knowledge Hydra left in your head and killed them all. Slow and painful.

Whatever fight Steve was bracing for disappears, almost as if your words punched the wind out of him. Perhaps his words as well, because he does nothing but to stare at you and his gaze – it burns. Because where there was hatred before, now rests something else. Sadness. Disappointment.

You look down at your hand, at your bloodied knuckles and after a moment you say, “I think about what I’ve done every day.”

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve pleads, sighing.

“I think about my mother every day and what she would—” Your breath, your words all get stuck in your throat. You blink and blink and blink because your eyes water, jaw locking tight.

Steve’s warm hand lands just above your knee, squeezing gently. “Your mother thought the world of you.”

“ _That’s just it_!” you snap and glare back at him, withdrawing just an inch from shouting. “She would turn in her damn grave if she knew what I’ve done.”

“Buck, that’s not true.”

Your whole chest ache; your throat feels painfully constricted and Steve—Steve waits for you out as you angrily wipe your cheeks dry, until your heavy breaths calm and words become something you can use again. It takes a minute, maybe two and Steve’s hand is still on your thigh, burning with its’ presence.

“Do you know what she said the last time I saw her?” you ask, your voice barely above a whisper and Steve shakes his head, because of course he doesn’t. Steve wasn’t there because he hates farewells. “She said, I’m so proud of you, but please dear, come back home, don’t do anything stupid, don’t risk your life for anyone else. Promise me that.”

When you look back at Steve, it looks like he’s suffering through a gut shot. Because isn’t that what you did? You went against everything she said for him and the result of that is something that you are convinced is worse than death. It’s the future and you are alone, because even Steve has moved on to another love.

“And she looked so sad, trying to smile as she cried, and I just can’t stop thinking about how devastated she must have been when she heard about my death.”

The word twisted itself on your tongue, tasting strange. You hadn’t died, not really. But to your family, you had and your mother—your mother must have missed you like crazy. Just like you miss her right now with every inch of your wretched soul; just like Tony must miss his.

It’s when you feel Steve’s hand cup your cheek, thumb swiping away just another tear of many, that you realize that you’re absolutely bawling. Small and lost and wounded, again.

“I miss her so much,” you sob and then it’s all coming loose. “I miss my mother so much it hurts.”

You squeeze your eyes shut and then you’re in Steve’s arms, protected. Warm, gentle hands rubbing circles over your back, his sweet hush in your ear.

∞

Right before you’re about to head home and into the ice, Steve pulls you in tight, hugs you hard. In your ear he whispers a promise, “The next time we go home, we’ll go visit your mother.”

**Author's Note:**

> Needless to say, I wrote this with my own mother in mind. This story has been resting in my documents for about a month, but I decided it was decent enough to send it out into the great cyberspace for everyone to read and hopefully, enjoy. 
> 
> [Come and hangout with me on Tumblr.](http://ohmymessiah.tumblr.com/)


End file.
